Part 12

To be sure--and this also must be said--these things are hard so long as the youthful man is in the full tide of his physical and mental unfolding. Such young people as have already attained to these things very early in life usually do not live very long. It appears that man, like the animal, and like the plant before it bears fruit, needs a time of self-seeking activity, in order first to obtain a sufficient growth and strength as a natural creature. In the case of man, however, there surely and naturally comes a moment when an exclusive or preëminent occupation about one’s own self becomes unnatural, and in every larger nature--and, it may perhaps be said, in every existence at all worthy of men--there comes the impulse to free oneself from oneself and to live for an idea.

This is the most decisive moment of existence. It is, with some men, comparable to a sudden, violent death, and a new birth to another life. With others, it is more like the gradual and quiet sinking of the former things into slumber, and the awakening and slow fashioning of a new nature.

But if this change has once taken place, in one way or the other, then all the real questions of human existence appear in another light, clear and solved.

But if this change does not take place in a man who is not wholly animal in his nature, then there always stays with him a never-quieted thirst for such a change; and likewise a feeling of guilt, which clearly says to him that he could and should have become something better, a voice within him he can not drown, however great his seeming success.

With this we have also solved the last question you will put: “What shall we get out of it? What real gain has a man from true culture?” To this is to be answered that every great inward advancement a man makes rests first upon a faith. He must forsake something he knows, and seek something toward which only a presentiment is leading him, something he can not understand yet fully, because the capacity is for the present lacking.

But if he possesses the courage to will it, he attains it; and of those who have attained this goal, not one has yet found the cost too high, or the toil too hard.

The reward of virtue in this world is just this, that virtue is, and that it can be overcome by no power of the world, but itself is the only real power and force that will completely fill life full and satisfy.

Tennyson has expressed this very beautifully in his poem “Wages”:

“Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song, Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an endless sea-- Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong-- Nay, but she aim’d not at glory, no lover of glory she: Give her the glory of going on, and still to be.

“The wages of sin is death: if the wages of Virtue be dust, Would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm and the fly? She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just, To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky: Give her the wages of going on, and not to die.”

It is therefore, in the judgment of the best even of our own day, fully worth the trouble to strive for true culture, and all attain who really desire--rich or poor, learned or unlearned. Indeed, what Christ first said for his own generation is also very appropriate for ours, that simple souls and modest lives stand much more intimately near to true culture, and on the way to it do not meet so many and so great hindrances as do the wise and the prudent, and especially the rich, who must first strip off infinitely many prejudices and attachments to outward things, all of which are irreconcilable with true culture.

It is therefore harder for some and easier for others to attain to culture, but for none impossible, save those whose mind is wholly bound up with material things, and are satisfied besides with a merely external culture that is rather form and show than reality, however much it may claim to be real.

An ancient Chinese philosopher has already expressed this very well in the following verses, somewhat naïvely translated:

“Men who win the highest prize Are quick to learn and quickly wise; Men in the second rank belong Who’re wise, but in the learning long; Those people must be classed as thirds Who stupid stay, and learn--but words.”

It scarcely lies within the will of every one of us whether his lot shall assign him to the first of these classes, and happily it is not a matter of very much concern. They are the great exceptions, the moral geniuses of humanity. But to the second rank every one of us is called, yes, emphatically challenged, when once the way has been shown. And the saddest thing that can happen to him in life is, if he nevertheless remains among the third sort of men, whose existence, at the end, has had no real worth, either for themselves, or for others.

“Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding; for the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold.

“Wisdom is more precious than rubies: and none of the things thou canst desire are to be compared unto her.

“Length of days is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor.

“Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.”

V. NOBLE SOULS

V. NOBLE SOULS

Kant somewhere suggests that all the natural capacities of a being were intended completely to unfold, at some time, along the line of some definite purpose, but that in man (the only reasonable being on earth) the capacities intended for the use of the reason can be unfolded completely only in the race, and not in every particular individual.

But since this does not come about quite of itself, the conclusion would necessarily follow that there must always be separate individuals who are specially called, to bring about for the whole of humanity this development to a higher stage of its existence--with the proviso that they shall also have willed to devote themselves to this purpose and, to this end, to set aside all other personal aims. And even the further conclusion would seem to be justified that no single human life would fully suffice for this, but that rather a certain bequeathal of this mission from hand to hand would be possible and fitting.

With this intent, the Mosaic legislation cherished the magnificent plan of lifting a whole tribe out of the ordinary conditions of the life of the nation, and devoting it to this, the noblest of the activities. Very significantly, this tribe was forbidden the possession of property; the Lord alone should be their inheritance, and every pious Israelite was obliged, in the interest of the whole, to help support them with the tenth part of his income (which, however, he could bestow on any Levite he chose). Whether such an arrangement could be realized in any of our modern states, and whether (and this is the important point) it could be kept up indefinitely as established, might be very questionable. But the certainty remains that every human society needs, for its preservation, some such kind of salt, without which it would the more easily fall into corruption. This salt is--the “noble souls.”

Doubtless Christianity, at the beginning, had the intention of requiring such a temper of soul of every one of its followers. But we have since become much more modest in our demands on Christendom in its entirety; we have been driven to say that there exist certain higher claims than the ordinary ones laid on everybody, but that these higher claims shall never require, so long as the world stands, an artificial, castelike order of men, but rather men who will accept them in a spirit of perfect freedom and even joy; and all thoughts of a specially privileged position resting on these claims, and all consequent feelings of superiority, must be completely shut out.

Thus this aristocracy has the advantage over all others in that it is immediately accessible to all and that every one may become the founder of an aristocratic family after this sort. Nor will there ever be much crowding to get into this aristocracy, but nearly every one will be ready to yield this place to the modern Levites, if only they, in return, will give up the eager competition for other advantages.

Noble souls, therefore, are those who completely renounce the chief aim of ordinary souls, the personal enjoyment of life, in order that they may devote themselves the more effectively to the elevation of the whole race.

The ready objection, that both can perhaps be combined, may well be disputed. Unless one purposely closes his eyes, his experience will rather show that this is not the case; and any proof other than experience will convince no one on this point. Nor can we yet really believe in any transformation and elevation of the whole of Christendom through anything that may happen in the future. Christendom, at least at first, can be regenerated only by the gradual formation once more of such a band of volunteers within it as will earnestly and literally accept the demands of the Christian faith--more earnestly than (in a purely practical sense) is possible to the majority of the souls comprising Christendom, or than, at least for the present, can be expected of them. The danger lurking therein, that a new Pharisaism might spring from it, is a real one; but the danger is lessened because this conception of life could remain on a purely individual basis, without taking any outward or organized form. It appears in general to be a characteristic mark of the present evolution of Christianity that, apart from all essential improvements in its outward form, it is going first to develop again from within into an “invisible church,” into a kingdom that truly is not of this world. To explain this, however, is not the purpose of this chapter; it would rather contradict this chapter’s leading thought, that it is first of all a duty for the individual to proceed to his own transformation. The question for us here, therefore, is only this: What are the necessary characteristics of a truly noble soul? What are the chief obstacles that stand in the way of this extraordinary guidance of the spirit? And finally, is it possible in our day, and is it worth the trouble, to strive after this goal? What will they, who do thus, receive?